It’s not often that software testing makes the news, but when it does, it’s usually because something within the test automation has gone spectacularly wrong. At 8:05 AM on January 13, 2018, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent out a false missile alert. While there is much that is still unclear regarding exactly what happened, most reports agree that an internal test was treated as a real event. According to The Washington Post, part of the problem may have been caused by a human operator who chose the “Missile alert” instead of the “Test missile alert” from an application menu.

When Applitools first launched in 2013, we were united behind a shared vision to make it easier for software developers to confidently release their products with visually perfect UI. In those days, there was a fairly robust ecosystem of open-source and commercial tools helping developers manage applications from a functional standpoint, but the process of testing, monitoring, and managing user experience was either completely manual or totally absent from the development cycle. UI issues often went unnoticed until discovered in production by customers. Not an ideal situation for anyone, as it led to slower development times and a poorer overall application experience. Read more…